Sunday, December 8, 2013

If you’re wondering how I
finally found the time to catch up with my blog posts, the answer is:the weather!As I stated earlier, Alan left for Montana on Thursday, and within a few
hours we were hit with the worst winter storm that we’ve had in quite some
time.If he had scheduled his flight for
late afternoon or early evening, he would have been stuck here.It’s true that Texans are quite wimpy when it
comes to winter weather, but this was really something!The pictures below are not of snow…that is
sleet that has been compacted and is now pretty much ice!

Here’s an overview looking
out of our front door:

Here’s a picture I took of
the road that runs in front of the house (Pretty slippery!):

In a weird (and lucky) twist
of fate, our heater went out just a couple of days before the cold snap. We had a new unit installed about 6 or 7(?)
years ago, and it was a total lemon from the day we got it. I’ve lost count how many times we have had it
repaired, and this time it was going to cost quite a bit (again!). It seems they quit making that model (I
wonder why?), and parts are hard to find, and this fact makes them cost a
lot. So a command decision was made to
just replace the whole unit. We got a
Lennox this time instead of Amana and are hoping it lasts much longer. Even though it hit our purse pretty hard, at
least we are warm, and ever so grateful that things were fixed up before it got
so very cold.

I used the first couple of
days of our “snow days” to catch up on some laundry and general housework. Church was cancelled today (quite unusual),
and I didn’t want to do regular chores, so I decided to catch up on the
blog. I also fired up my bread
machine. My mother-in-law gave it to me
many, many years ago, and it’s still working!
The bread turned out so well, and it was so easy, I found myself asking,
“Why don’t I use it more often?” Just
dumb! I will certainly crank it up more
often in the future. Here’s the recipe I
used for the bread I made today. I
really like it because I have quite a few cans of potato flakes in my food
storage arsenal, and I need as many uses for them as I can get! It’s also just plain good!

Crusty
Potato Bread

3-1/4 cups bread flour

1/2 cup instant mashed potato flakes

1
tablespoon white sugar

1-1/2
teaspoons salt

2
tablespoons butter

1-1/4
cups water

2
teaspoons instant yeast

Place ingredients in the pan of the bread machine in the
order recommended by the manufacturer. Select White Bread Cycle; press Start.

Note: This recipe
was originally found on the “All Recipes” website – to visit the site, clickhere.

Since I didn’t want to break my neck trotting back and
forth to the chicken coop, Opal Chicken has been sleeping in her dog crate in
the craft room. I have taken her outside
a few times to let her stretch her legs, as well as to show her that it really
is awful out there and she should be glad to be inside! She also has spent some time in the mud room
(the floor is covered in newspaper) so that she can eat and drink and stretch
some more. Nestlé Bunny has also been
stranded inside, but she has so much fun chasing Toffee around the house that
she doesn’t care.

That’s pretty much my life: keeping fur and feathers alive, aside from
doing yard work and such. I am hoping it
clears up soon because I have a date this week with this little girl:

Paisley (aka: “Stink-A-Tha”)
is growing to be quite a little lady.
She loves going and doing things, and is definitely into her weekly dance
lessons. Since Fox has been born, she
has also gone to an event to meet Doc McStuffins, and she went to a little
theatre play showing “Blue’s Clues” and got to have her picture made with
Blue. In an effort to make sure that
her events are not spoiled by her baby brother melting down, I actually have
spent more of my time with Fox (aka: “Boyfriend”),
keeping him home while Stink-A-Tha goes
out with her parents. Even though it has
been for her benefit, I think she might be feeling a little neglected by her
Old Lolee. Therefore, I am looking
forward to picking her up some morning this week, doing a little shopping, and
then taking her to lunch. I never want
my girl to feel less than wonderful in her Old Lolee’s heart!

As for Boyfriend, he’s growing bigger and wants to walk
so badly that he can’t stand it! He has
already been scooching across the floor (that was last month), and I anticipate
that he will be quite the go-getter.
Mandy says that he will be the one who destroys her house. But here’s the thing: He has this crazy
little crooked smile that he flashes that just melts your heart. I have a feeling that it won’t matter what he
does, or how much destruction he causes -- he will get out of all kinds of
trouble with that little crooked smile and those big, blue eyes.

So that’s it!
Pretty much caught up for now!
The Christmas season is upon us, and there will be fun times ahead!

Thanksgiving was a little different this year; Paisley’s
allergies have made it impossible for her to be at our house for any
length of time.Mom and I had considered
doing the actual cooking over at Mandy’s house, but the thought of having to
trot all of the ingredients, etc., over there and back again was just too
much.So we decided to do the cooking at
our house and schlep the finished dinner to the Lacky abode for the actual
event.

Mandy and her family have a tradition of visiting Bass Pro
Shop on Thanksgiving morning. There is
the most amazing Santa there (the only one that Paisley has ever known!). Grump-Pa (or as Paisley says, “Gunt-Pa”)
decided to spend the morning with the family and get in on this Santa visit
himself. The store is always decorated
and ready for Christmas, a wonderful place for some pictures:

Paisley was ready for Santa this year! She told him her heart’s desire: A Big Bird, an Elmo, and a penguin for the
bath(?)…

Here is the official Santa photo for Paisley…

…And the official Santa photo for Fox:

After they returned, Dee Dee, Alan, and I loaded up the
dinner and we were off! I have to admit,
it wasn’t quite as good as it is when it’s piping hot, directly from the oven,
but it was still pretty good!

Alan came home from Yellowstone after spending a couple of
weeks in Bozeman, MT, with a friend. Due
to the government shut-down, he had to leave the park much earlier than he had
expected, and his friend was kind enough to let him hang out there until his
scheduled flight home. It seems like he
wasn’t here any time at all before it was time for him to go back for the
winter season! (It certainly wasn’t long
enough for his mother, let me tell you!)
While Alan was here, he mostly enjoyed having home-cooked meals and
catching up on some of his favorite television shows. I had a whole DVR stacked up with things that
I thought he might like to watch, and I was right! We also made the rounds of his favorite
restaurants; there’s not a lot to pick from in Yellowstone.

He left to go back to Montana this past Thursday, and
the biggest irony is that he left just a few hours before the ice storm to beat
all ice storms hit here. Our airport
started cancelling flights just about 3 hours or so after he left. He since has posted pictures of what the streets in
Bozeman look like, and believe it or not, I think our streets look even worse!

Of course, while he was here, he had to spend some time with
his best girl:

And I was pleasantly surprised at how much he likes
Fox. He absolutely adores him!

Mandy took this picture just a couple of days before he
left:

I know he has to make his own life, but I sure wish it was
just a little closer. I always cry like
a total nit-wit whenever he leaves. I
hope he will be home again soon!

Blessing Day for Fox came a little later than it does for
most babies, mostly because he had been so uncomfortable/sick/fussy with reflux
and/or colic.But it finally came, and
it was a special day for the family.In
our church, a blessing is somewhat like a christening for a baby in other
churches, although it isn’t exactly like a christening.At a baby’s blessing, their name is
officially stated, and then a prayer is said over the child (Jeromy did the
honors), with some sort of blessing pronounced.

Fox looked quite dapper on his special day:

Afterwards, we went to Mandy and Jeromy’s to take some
pictures (and eat some food!):

We were quite happy that Robert’s mother, Grandma Lynda, was
able to come, too:

In fact, it was Grandma Lynda who made the beautiful little
outfit that Fox was wearing:

It was Grandma Lynda who also made the beautiful dress that
Paisley wore on her Blessing Day:

Mandy is going to have them treated and preserved so that
each of her grandchildren will have a special outfit to wear on their blessing day…One
of those family heirlooms to be treasured forever!

The Christmas season is already upon us, meaning that there
will be lots of fun things to post about.
However, the OCD part of me will not allow me to write about any
of that until I catch up on what has already happened around here! So before Christmas, before Thanksgiving,
there was Halloween! Now, Halloween is
not a big deal to me any more (it mostly just means handing out candy, and
Robert actually did that this year) – but, over at the Lackey household, it was
quite the event(s). Lucky for me, Mandy
is a great photographer who not only likes to take pictures, but doesn’t mind
if her old mother steals them for her personal use. Since I wasn’t there, I will try to relate
the events to the best of my memory of the story:

A couple of days before Halloween, there was something
called “Boo at the Zoo” and Mandy went with a very good friend of hers and all
of their crumb crunchers.There was “trick-or-treating”:

And Paisley played all kinds of fun games:

And Fox – Well, he mostly just sat around looking cute:

Even though it was tons of fun, I think they were there for
quite some time, and Paisley reached a point that she was just done:

That was too bad, because there was a party at the church
later that night, and the whole family went:

Mandy had been asked to be one of the official photographers,
tasked to take family-type shots of all of the attendees. She used Jeromy and Paisley as subjects for
some test shots, and our little bunny was so tired, even her ears were
drooping:

On Halloween night, the little family went “trick-or-treating”
with some other family friends, hoping that Paisley would have more fun and
more confidence about going up to strangers’ doors if she was with a group. At some homes, she still needed a little help from Dad…

But other homes seemed safe enough that she could do it
herself:

I was quite tickled that Paisley wanted to be a bunny this
year…just like her mother did when she was a little girl. Here’s a side-by-side of my two sweet
bunnies:

Gone But Never Forgotten: Cookie...

...And Chewka Marie...

...And Ruby...

Liked roosting on our shoulders, eating grapes, and hanging out with Opal

...And Pearl

Liked running free in the yard, scratching in the garden bed that was supposed to be off-limits, and being close to a human at all times. "Her" crowing led to "her" having to go back to her original family due to a city ordinance against roosters!

...And Molly

Likes EVERYONE IN THE WHOLE WORLD, pouncing Cookie and Toffee, going out to potty at 2:45 a.m., and drinking water out of puddles. Is now living with another family in the area, in a big house with a pool and two other Golden Retrievers!